History of Baltic States

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major treatment

In prehistoric times Finno-Ugric tribes inhabited a long belt stretching across northern Europe from the Urals through northern Scandinavia, reaching south to present-day Latvia. The predecessors of the modern Balts bordered them along a belt to the south, stretching west from a region in what is now central Russia to the area of the mouth of the Vistula River in Poland. Large areas of...

Brothers of the Sword

...the Livs, the Finno-Ugrian people dwelling near the mouths of the Dvina and Gauja rivers, and by 1217 it had conquered not only the neighbouring Latvian tribes north of the Dvina but also southern Estonia. It then began the conquest of the lands south of the Dvina but encountered strong resistance from their inhabitants, the Curonians (Kurs) and the Semigallians. In September 1236 while the...

Finland

From the 12th century, Finland was a battleground between Russia and Sweden. The economic rivalry of the powers in the Baltic was turned into a religious rivalry, and the Swedish expeditions took on the character of crusades. Finland is mentioned together with Estonia in a list of Swedish provinces drawn up for the pope in 1120, apparently as a Swedish missionary area. The first crusade,...

glasnost and perestroika

...permitted non-Russian nationalities to voice their opposition to Russian and communist domination and led to a growth of nationalism and regionalism. This was exacerbated by economic decline. In the Baltic republics, especially, many argued that they could run their economic affairs better than Moscow. Interethnic strife and conflict intensified and sometimes resulted in bloodshed. The conflict...

Protestant Reformation

By the middle of the 16th century, Lutheranism had spread into the various principalities and kingdoms of northern Europe. The duchy of Württemberg, after the restoration of Duke Ulrich, adopted reform in 1534; its outstanding reformer was Johannes Brenz and its great centre Tübingen. Brandenburg, and its capital Berlin, embraced reform in 1539, and in that same year ducal Saxony,...

Russia

...Sweden and the Turks. Moscow accepted his allegiance in return for military assistance and thus became involved in a protracted struggle with Poland and Sweden for the Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Baltic territories. At first the war went well, but the differing objectives of the Ukrainian and Muscovite allies soon revealed themselves. When Charles X of Sweden entered the fray against Poland,...

...the schools in the western provinces, at the expense of the Polish. Nicholas approved of this, for the Poles had been guilty of rebellion, but when the attempt was made to Russify the Germans of the Baltic provinces, he objected. The Baltic Germans were loyal subjects and provided admirable officers and officials; they were therefore allowed to preserve their German culture and to maintain their...

...shown consistent loyalty to the empire and now found themselves confronted by government policies that aimed to curtail the rights and privileges of their culture and nationality. The Germans of the Baltic provinces were deprived of their university, and their ancient secondary schools were Russified. The Latvians and Estonians did not object to action by the government against the Germans, whom...

World War I

...should be ripe. When the Germans, despite the armistice, invaded the Ukraine to cooperate with the Ukrainian nationalists against the Bolsheviks there and furthermore resumed their advance in the Baltic countries and in Belorussia, Lenin rejected his colleague Leon Trotsky’s stopgap policy (“neither peace nor war”) and accepted Germany’s terms in order to save the Bolshevik...

World War II

...improve relations with the Nazis. The Western powers accordingly stepped up their appeals to Moscow for an alliance, but they faced two lofty hurdles. First, Stalin demanded the right to occupy the Baltic states and portions of Romania. While Westerners could scarcely expect to enlist the Red Army in their cause without giving something in return, they could not justify turning free peoples...

...part of that country on September 17. Under the Secret Protocols of the Pact (as amended later in the month) the Soviet Union received western Ukraine and western Belorussia, together with the three Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Heavy pressure was now put on these latter three, and they were forced to accept Soviet garrisons under treaties signed in September and October. The...

Profiting quickly from its understanding with Germany, the U.S.S.R. on October 10, 1939, constrained Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to admit Soviet garrisons onto their territories. Approached with similar demands, Finland refused to comply, even though the U.S.S.R. offered territorial compensation elsewhere for the cessions that it was requiring for its own strategic reasons. Finland’s armed...